


The Tower

by akire_yta



Series: prompt ficlets [605]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 06:07:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19223179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akire_yta/pseuds/akire_yta
Summary: thebaconsandwichofregret askedPrompt: Princess Penny





	The Tower

The tower gave a great view along the length of valley, and Penny sat with her head propped in her hands, staring at the world laid out below her as every half hour guards glanced in to confirm she was still her prisoner.

Her writing desk was pressed against the stonework there, for the light she told her captors. She could sit and read the eclectic library some previous residence had assembled in the shelves by the door, or braid and rebraid her hair in the bronzed mirror she found under the bed.

There was water to haul up the long, long rope from the well, and meals to prepare from the meagre ingredients the shove through the hatch. Her guards sniggered, making lewd jokes at the poor little princess made to do her own cooking and cleaning, no maid servant or footman to fetch and carry for her.

Penny sat and read, braided and thought, bided her time, and planned.

She could see the length of the valley, and she knew from experience that the valley could see the tower. The summer’s day had been long and hot, hotter in the tower where all the mirrors and glass had been rearranged to the precise plan she’d calculated to focus the light and heat where she needed it most. 

The lowering dusk was behind her now though, meaning anyone looking at this window of this tower from the valley could see the flashes of sunlight she was pulsing off the bronze mirror in a pattern of dots and dashes copied painstakingly and practiced night after night with a candle against the wall opposite her bed.

Penny sent the last pulse of her final message back towards the valley and moved on flannel feet to put her back to the wall. She heard the hatch slide open, and she glanced over at her bed, her freshly lopped braid dangling out of her carefully mussed bedding.

She counted the paces, their routine now etched into her mind, then sprinted across her cell and leapt onto the well rope, riding the play out and down several metres. The well narrowed, she knew, to a gap no wider than the bucket, too tight for a human to go out. But the stone walls provided adequate protection as the small glass she’d set up above the sun-boiled cauldron teetered as the candle burned the thread holding it up.

She heard the splash and started counting. At seven the world went white and silence turned to pure noise. She clutched the rope, grateful for the muscles developed hauling up water day after day, until silence flowed back in.

The two guards by her door were barely visible under the rubble. Hauling up the bag she’d tucked down the well for safe keeping, she slung it over her shoulder. Her newly cropped hair fluttered in the evening breeze wafting through the hole in the wall. Outside she could hear guards screaming orders but paid them no mind.

Her armies were ready, the Morse code flashing across the valley laying out this plan with literal military precision. Penny skipped lightly over the corpses and headed for the stairs to rejoin her generals and lead them to victory like a poor little princess should.


End file.
